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Offers a complex analysis of the psychodynamic role of shame in Melville's work, with detailed readings of Moby-Dick, Pierre, and "Billy Budd."
Raymond M. Weaver's 'Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic' is a meticulous examination of the life and works of the iconic American author. Weaver delves into Melville's literary style, exploring his use of symbolism and themes of existentialism and isolation in novels such as 'Moby-Dick' and 'Billy Budd'. Through a scholarly lens, Weaver places Melville's writings in the context of 19th-century American literature, highlighting his innovative contributions to the genre of maritime fiction. Weaver's analysis illuminates the depths of Melville's writing, revealing the complexities and nuances that have captivated readers for generations. As a renowned Melville scholar, Raymond M. Weaver brings...
The Malcolm Letter was written by Melville in 1849 on the birth of his son. This letter is one of thirty-six to be retrieved since the publication of The Letters of Herman Melville (1960) and has earned a place in the New York Public Library's Gansevoort-Lansing Collection. Addressed to Melville's brother, the letter entices critics to read it on several levels. It reveals Melville's serious consideration of his own father's influence on his upbringing as he anticipates undertaking the role of father himself. It is not a literary work, but a deeply personal outpouring distinguished by dark underpinnings barely hidden by his light-hearted tone. In a bit of dramatic irony, Melville reflects on the responsibility looming ahead of him as the reader notes the tragedy that Melville cannot possibly foresee - his son Malcolm's suicide eighteen years later. Cohen's and Yannella's careful study relives for the reader this and other events which shaped the clannish Melville family history. They also show how the author's struggle with these pressures are manifested in his writing. This volume is published in cooperation with the New York Public Library.
Traces Melville's life from his childhood in New York, through his adventures abroad as a sailor, to his creation of "Moby-Dick," and forty years later, to his death, in obscurity.
Through a Glass Darkly tells the story of Ron Hennessey, an Iowa farmer who returned from the Korean War to discover that farming no longer held much allure. Hennessey joined a Catholic missionary society and after nine years of study was ordained a priest and sent to Guatemala. The book describes Hennessey's conversion from being an unapologetic patriot from America's heartland to a staunch opponent of Ronald Reagan's policies in Central America - policies that occasionally threatened Hennessey's life. Hennessey's story has a subtext: America's ideals of freedom, democracy, and progress-with-justice have been violated abroad by one U.S. president after another.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1951.
This study treats comprehensively the sixteen short works of fiction that Herman Melville wrote between 1853 and 1856, most of which were published in Harper's and Putnam's magazines. Concentrating on the writer's two basic motivations for writing as he did in these stories, Dillingham argues that Melville created a surface of almost inane congeniality in many of the works, an illusion of vapidity that camouflages a profundity often missed by his readers. He sought to to hide disturbing themes because the magazines for which he was writing would almost certainly have rejected his attempts to be more direct. Dillingham's method is not, however, confined to a reading of the texts. Melville's s...
This collection of analytical essays is the result of several conferences throughout 1991, the centennary of Herman Melville's death. They survey the past and present of Melville Studies and suggest directions for the future.